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[snip "pre" discussion as others are "going there"]
<<
A colleague uses, 'Where are you at?" instead of "Where are you" when
the degree of precision wanted is greater. He explains that the 'at'
will prompt a more precise statement of location.
>>
The American Dialect Society mailing list (ads-l) is currently discussing
this type of phrasing. According to some the discussion, he may have a
point. Now they are trying to determine if the usage is more socially or
geographically distributed.
<<
A recent (Adobe Photoshop v6.0, If I recall) user manual invited me
to 'check out' some facet of the program. This was unexpected. Do
others among you use 'check out' to mean refer to? Is this now
acceptable form in print?
>>
I "checked out" the online dictionaries and found out the meaning of "check
out" as "see" or "refer to" was not listed. It is only listed in the
English slang dictionary.
check out v 1. to see, to look at. ("Check out that guy over there.")
2. to visit, inspect. ("We checked out that new restaurant but the food was
terrible.")
I do indeed use it in my writing, and, until now, did not realize it was
slang. It is common throughout the Internet (you can "check it out" by
doing a search on the phrase "check out"). My guess is that it is in the
process of becoming acceptable, and that the dictionaries haven't caught up
with it yet....
Good discussion,
Rose A. Wilcox
Project Office / Power Trading
Communication Specialist / Technical Writer
Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- PinnacleWest -dot- com
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